“New NFL rule: You can catch the ball by catching the guy who caught the ball.”
“Touchdownception.”
“I have Russell Wilson and Golden Tate on my fantasy team, so clearly that was a touchdown.”
NFL memes with these sayings and others like them filled my Facebook news feed for the first few days of this week, and rightfully so.
The replacement NFL referees’ terrible call in the final eight seconds of the Seahawks-Packers game on Monday night cost the Packers the game and put them at 1-2 for the season.
For anyone who has not seen the play, the YouTube video of the clip already has almost 100 thousand views. As the clock runs down, Seattle quarterback Russel Wilson throws a 40-plus yard pass to a group of five Packers and two Seahawks.
The mass of players jumps up fighting to grab the ball and comes down in a heap. It is blatantly clear that Green Bay’s M.D. Jennings has the ball, but when the pile of players is pulled apart, the referees somehow come to the conclusion that Golden Tate caught the pass.
And trust me, I wish I didn’t have to say that the Packers should have won – they’re the Bears’ biggest rivals.
So as wrong as those referees were, I think the root of the problem sat with the NFL itself.
The league hired many replacement refs who had never officiated a game above the college level. They held up contract negotiations with the referee’s union, going an entire month without even meeting to discuss ending the strike.
The core reason behind the strike was salary. There are a few other factors playing into it though, including pension and the amount of officials working each game.
On one hand, I want to say those officials on strike should have compromised and come back to the game sooner. If they really care about the sport it should be paining them to see that NFL officiating is proceeding to fall apart due to their absence and want to come back.
But the world doesn’t work like that, and as much as I’m sure that pains them, the refs’ bank accounts apparently feel the pain even more. So they waited. And waited.
And it took a play that stirred up an incredible amount of angry conversation for the league to ralize that the referees are key players in the NFL, and their skills are worth their salaries. Or maybe it ws the fact that even Obama filed a complaint.
But all the same, the replacement refs should have known what they were doing.
I mean, it was their job.
